


Part Three: Aftermath

by providing_leverage



Series: SSA Sam Singer [3]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:55:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29632185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/providing_leverage/pseuds/providing_leverage
Summary: Garcia enters the coordinates into her computer.They’re in her room, the batcave. Morgan gave it that nickname years ago and they still use it. It’s just Garcia, JJ, and him. The rest of them took the other SUV to Sam’s apartment. To find...something. Evidence? Some way to explain what was going on.“Oh.” Garcia says.“Oh?” JJ asks, “Where do they lead?”“Nebraska.”
Relationships: Jo Harvelle/Spencer Reid, Sam Winchester & The BAU
Series: SSA Sam Singer [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1907932
Comments: 8
Kudos: 69





	Part Three: Aftermath

Garcia enters the coordinates into her computer. 

They’re in her room, the batcave. Morgan gave it that nickname years ago and they still use it. It’s just Garcia, JJ, and him. The rest of them took the other SUV to Sam’s apartment. To find...something. Evidence? Some way to explain what was going on.

“Oh.” Garcia says. 

“Oh?” JJ asks, “Where do they lead?”

“Nebraska.” She says, word for word what she’d told him a month ago. “Harvelle’s Roadhouse, a bar in Nebraska.”

JJ notices the shock in her tone. “Why is that a surprise?”

“Because I had her find me that address already.” Reid tells her, getting up to stand on the other side of Garcia. He looks at the screen, hoping she’d somehow read it wrong. But the words are exactly as she’d said.

He grabs for his phone, dialing the number from muscle memory alone, not bothering to open his contacts though her name would be at the top anyway. 

_ They know about the Roadhouse. It wasn’t a fluke. They know and want to meet us there. Do they know I know? _

The phone seems so agonizingly slow. The ringing takes forever. Long enough for Reid to remember the entire bizarre day. Sam’s betrayal and life story that was impossible as it was tragic.

As impossible as waking up in that conference room like no time had passed. As impossible as Garcia being with them instead of in D.C. All the evidence had been right where it had been the first time they’d searched the flower shop. The case was done and their murderer dead. The BAU hadn’t stuck around to help the police catch her killer. 

The phone finally, finally connects. “Jo? I-”

“Nope.” The voice on the other end of Joanna Beth Harvelle’s phone is female but not hers. His body goes cold.

“Who is this?” JJ and Penelope are staring at him now, alert at the fear in his voice.

“My name is Anna. I work here.” The name is familiar. The week Reid spent in Nebraska, he only met four of the six people who worked at the Roadhouse. Jo said Anna and Arthur were on vacation. “Gabriel said to expect a call from you, that’s why Jo gave me her phone. Said this wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have over the phone.”

“Gabriel talked to you? Jo knows him?” 

JJ takes the phone from him when he doesn't respond to her and puts it on speakerphone just in time for Anna to say “Of course Jo knows him. She...well, it’s none of my business. Personally I think everyone’s life would be a lot less complicated if the younger Winchester stopped pretending to be normal. Or if they’d just let me kill him forever ago.”

“And they say _ I’m _ psychotic.” A male voice in a British accent mutters on Anna’s side of the line. 

His friends look more confused now, and alarmed. Reid feels the same. 

“Anyway, we’ll be waiting. Two days from now, you know the place. You come alone, though how armed is your choice. Try to send in a SWAT team or any other agents and they’ll find themselves in a desert in Africa with no memory of who they are or how they got there.” Anna says. “I do hope you make the right choice, for Sam’s sake and your own. My older brother might act the most human of us all but he’s one of the oldest and most wild. And he’s very much in love with Lucifer’s vessel.” She ends the call.

“Spence,” JJ stares at him. “What the hell was that?”

__________________________________________________________

The dirt road is slightly smoother in the Bureau’s large SUVs than the tiny car Reid had rented the first time he’d been here.

That first drive, he had been nervous. Because he’d lied to Prentiss about what he was going to do in the last week of his sabbatical since classes had been cancelled due to a burst pipe flooding the lecture hall. He’d told her he was going to visit his mom when really he had been following a weak link between a group of serial killers and a so called prophet. 

This time, Reid still has no clue what he’s going to find. He now knows for a fact that Harvelle’s Roadhouse is some sort of safehouse or meeting place for CATE. He also knows the burly cook and shy but iron spined waitress and the guy who did a little of everything including the books and often fell asleep on the pool tables in the back.

Most of all Spencer knows the owner of the Roadhouse. What her favorite song and kind of ice cream were. How her long golden hair looked when she tossed it over her shoulder. Spencer knows her beautiful loud laugh and…

And he knew he loved her, or would given more time. He knew what her lips had tasted like that last night he’d been here when they closed up the bar and danced to KISS.

The parking lot in front of the Roadhouse is empty, a piece taped to the door that says, in Sam’s handwriting,  _ Closed for a private function. _

“They could be parked at the house out back.” Where Jo had grown up and now lived with Ash and Kaia, renting out the two spare bedrooms on the first floor. Reid had stayed in one of them during his week here, trying to determine if the Roadhouse had any connection to CATE and somehow missing everything.

“Stick close, stay alert.” Prentiss tells them as they get out of the cars, doors slamming.

The door creaks when they open it to announce their presence. Despite it being near sundown, it looks like the Roadhouse hasn’t been open all day. The chairs are still stacked on the tables and the lights are on low. In the back the jukebox plays quietly.  _ Carry On Wayward Son  _ by Kansas.

Sam waits for them at the bar, back to them. “You know, I saw them in concert once, when I was young. I still don’t know how Dean managed to get the tickets. I didn’t enjoy it, too loud.”

As the final notes fade out, he turns in his stool to look at the team. He looks...awful, is the only word that comes to Reid’s mind. Like he hasn’t slept since he saw them last. “Well?”

Prentiss dosen’t answer his question. Instead she walks across the room and sits down next to Sam. Rossi follows and sits on the other side. Slowly, every member of the BAU crosses the room to sit on either side of Sam at the bar.

“We went through the...bunker, under your apartment.” Prentiss says.

“I finally understand why you live in that piece of shit. Awful view, terrible commute, really cool secret tunnel.” Luke adds and that gets a small smile out of Sam.

“There was...a lot down there. Impossible things that I have a feeling aren’t the half of it.” Prentiss continues. “And that thing Gabriel did...bent time or  _ whatever.  _ We did blood tests on all of us, we weren’t drugged. All combined...well, we didn’t have much of a choice.”

“ ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Arthor Connan Doyle,  _ The Sign of the Four.”  _ The quote is too perfect for Reid to resist throwing it out.

“So you believe me.” There’s grief in Sam’s eyes but also overwhelming relief.

It’s Tara who says, from Sam’s left but Reid’s right, “Belief is not the same as forgiveness. You still lied to us for a year. You pointed a gun at Reid and Rossi.”

All that hope drains from Sam in an instant. His shoulders slump and his head hangs. The whiskey glass in his hand is gripped tighter.

JJ speaks next. “Years ago, me and our old Unit Chief, Hotch, we made a decision that hurt people on this team. We faked Prentiss’ death. When the others learned the truth...I thought they’d never forgive us. But they did.”

“After Tobias Hankel injected me with dilaudid I became addicted. I said a lot of things to people that I didn’t mean, including Emily who was new to the team at the time.” Reid confesses. 

Around they go, talking about all the wrongs they’ve done while on this team and how they righted those wrongs or were forgiven. Luke and Tara don't have many but those who have been around for years...it’s a long conversation. By the end of it, Sam looks torn between confusion, despair, and hope.

“The point is,” Emily says when they’re done, taking Sam’s hand in hers. “we’ve all screwed up in the past. You lied to us but you did it to protect yourself and your family. Us too, to a certain extent. We forgive you.”

“So you’re saying…”

“I’m saying the BAU will always have a place for you, SSA Sam Singer.”

__________________________________________________________

There had been people parked out back after all. Sam goes out and comes back with several people, including his brother, the angel Castiel, and the staff of the Roadhouse.

Alcohol is broken out, the stove's warmed up to put burgers on, the jukebox turned up and set to play cheerier tunes. A party with FBI agents and the people they’d been hunting not long before.

Ried moves to the seat he’d decided was his favorite while he was here before. At the bar and in the corner, it provided the best view of the room. From here he could see Garcia at the pool tables where Ash sat cross legged. With them is a red headed woman in a Star Wars shirt under a green flannel. They’re all huddled around a computer and talking excitedly.

To his left Prentiss and Alvez have found a booth with a man who had introduced himself as Ketch and they’re in the middle of a long discussion about long range weapons as well as concealing weapons. 

Tara and Dean Winchester sit in the booth beyond that, chatting with Rossi about classic cars when the older agent isn’t questioning Castiel about philosophy and religion. JJ has somehow become engaged in a fierce darts competition against a second redhead woman. She stands and acts enough like Gabriel and Castiel (the only way Reid could describe it was  _ too still _ ) that he assumed she was also an angel. Neither of them had missed yet.

“Ten bucks says that’s going to end in bloodshed.” Jo says.

And there she is. Behind the bar, just like she had been the night they met. Perfect blonde curls half heartedly tied back, her smile showing off her beautiful white teeth, buff arms and their full sleeves of colorful tattoos left on full display by her tank top.

A part of Reid that had been tensed up since the moment Anna answered his call loosens at the sight of her, whole and beautiful and unharmed. The memory of Maeve quiets but dosen’t fade, never fades.

“I don’t know, JJ is normally pretty level headed.” Reid says as casually as he can, as if he’s not internally shaking.

Jo smiles. “Hello Spencer.”

“Hello Jo.”

They fall quiet. Not talking, just looking. 

“So you forgave him.” Jo says at last.

Reid licks his lips. “Near enough. We understand why he did it.”

“Good.” She smiles, a bit of that swagger coming back. “Sam is basically my brother. If you hurt him I’dve had to shoot you.” He feels his own smile falter. “Too soon?”

“Just a bit.” The sight of Sam killing that girl and threating him and Rossi would haunt him for a while. “Brother huh? How’d that happen?”

“It’s….a long story. Our parents were close, for a while.”

“I’ve got all night.” It’s an olive branch, an offer. The tentative hope he’d felt when they’d kissed before he left, when she’d given him her number and said to text her, wells up again.

Jo swollows. Considers. Nods her head. “Okay. But not here. You remember how to get to the roof?” Reid hums in agreement. “Meet me up there in three minutes. I’ll tell you everything. Oh, and bring the good whiskey when you come.”

It’s not a picture perfect ending. They all still have far to go, a new world to adjust to. A world where monsters were real, criminals wern’t the bad guys, and angels were dicks. Things had changed.

To get to the rooftop access door, Reid has to go past the tech squad gathered around the pool tables in the back. Ash and Garcia raise their eyebrows suggestivly in unison (perhaps introducing them had been a bad idea) and the redhead grins. Reid has no doubt that the entire team would know he’d slipped out after Jo by the time the night was over. He’d have to suffer their teasing and overbearingness the entire ride back home. Rossi would probably call Morgan too so their former coworker could join in.

Maybe not  _ everything  _ had changed.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> God this has been sitting on my computer since Novemeber, finished except for the last like hundred words. I'm a mess.
> 
> Thank you all for reading this, especially those who have been waiting so long. Sorry if the Roadhouse and Jo/Reid dosen't make sense to those of you who are not psycic and thus don't have acoess to my brain where the Inuterlude where Reid actually met the Roadhouse crew exits and will probably never exits outside of. 
> 
> To clarify: the Roadhouse here is run by Jo, Ash, Benny, Kaia, Anna, and Ketch (becuase he's my guilty i-love-him-despite-being-kinda-evil character.)


End file.
